Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) will present the first installment of the three-part workshop How to Write a Musical That Works. The focus of the first workshop will be “The World and The Want,” a dramaturgical analysis of the essential moments in the opening 20 minutes of a show, including setting the tone and the world as well as establishing the want and the journey of your central characters. The workshop is set for Sunday, July 12, 2026, from 12-6:30PM on Zoom. Submissions are due on June 28; to apply, please visit https://truonline.org/events/2026-feedback-workshop-1/.

This workshop is dedicated to fostering a conversation about the structure of musicals, not only for writers but also for producers, directors, and everyone involved in the creation and production of new works. Each workshop will accept up to nine writing teams and/or producers who will share works in progress and get feedback from a panel of expert evaluators. Audience members will also have a chance to offer their observations and participate in discussions.

Our supportive panel of musical professionals will include:

Cate Cammarata, Off-Broadway producer, director, and dramaturg, former literary manager of TRU;
Cheryl Davis, Kleban and Larsen Award-winning librettist and lyricist (Barnstormer), Audelco Award-winning playwright (Maid’s Door), general counsel for The Author’s Guild;
Skip Kennon, composer/lyricist (Herringbone, Don Juan DeMarco, Time and Again), former artistic coordinator of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and teacher for two decades;
Tamra Pica, network and streaming TV, film, and theater producer, producer and casting director of Write Act Repertory;
John Sparks, founder/co-director of the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, former artistic director of ANMT/NMI, founder of WritersWorkshop at Theatre Building Chicago.

In this first feedback workshop, “Part 1: The World and the Want,” we will focus on two main aspects of your show: 1) the opening number (or any number that invites the audience into the world of the show and sets the storytelling rules); and 2) the songs and scenes in which you introduce your characters and invite us to follow their journey. We will discuss “I want” songs, “I am” songs, and “I feel” songs, and the function of each, with special attention to the way they move the action. In addition, we will continually explore the delicate balance between script and song, so it is important that you present a continuous portion of scene and song from your show.

Bob Ost, executive director of Theater Resources Unlimited and composer/lyricist/librettist, will facilitate. The TRU Selection Committee will determine what song and scene from your show we want you to present, although you may tell us your preference. We will provide a Zoom room, access to a music director and editor, actor and director suggestions, panelists, and an audience.

Those selected for presentation are required to create their presentation using a music director providing a solid piano track and zoom-savvy talent. A sound engineer will be needed to help mix the separate tracks for each voice. You may have a solo number performed “live” with a track, but make sure your singer has adequate virtual tech set-up and a pre-recorded track that they can play from the location where they are performing. We will also have a tech advisor to help you.

Those not selected will be invited and encouraged to attend the workshop as observers. The price is $55 ($35 for TRU members). Your submission fee will be applied to the Observer fee. We will be promoting this to writers, directors, and producers, with the hope of generating a useful conversation to help us all develop the skills to create successful works for musical theater.

All writers are expected to be in attendance for the entire day.

Schedule

12:00-12:15 – check-in

12:15 pm to 12:45 pm – Discussion: How do you engage an audience in the world of your show? What constitutes an effective opening number? What does the audience need to know?

12:45 am to 3:15 pm – Five writing teams will explain their work’s overall concept (in 30 seconds or less) and present up to 12 minutes of the opening scene and song. After each presentation, panelists will provide feedback.

LUNCH/ZOOM BREAK (Stretch, rest your eyes)

4:15 pm to 5:00 pm – Discussion: How does the audience know whose story to follow? Who is the engine of your show? Do all of your characters have “wants”? Do they need to? Panelists will comment and invite additional audience feedback.

5:15 pm to 7:15 pm – Four writing teams will explain their work’s overall concept (in 30 seconds or less) and present up to 12 minutes that include the main characters’ “I Want” song or songs. After each presentation, panelists will provide feedback.

**All writers are expected to be in attendance for the entire day, or at least the full half-day session in which their work is presented.

Panelists

CATE CAMMARATA is an Off-Broadway producer, director, and dramaturg in NYC specializing in the development of new plays and musicals, and was the Literary Manager for Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) for over ten years. She is the Founder and Executive Producer of CreateTheater’s New Works Festival and Artistic Director of The Experts Theater Company. Her company, CreateTheater.com, has developed and produced dozens of new plays and musicals since its founding in 2016. Off-Broadway: The Assignment, My Father’s Daughter. Regional: My Life Is a Musical (Bay Street Theater), Bran Castle (Porchlight Theater). In development: Atlantis (book by Ken Cerniglia & Scott Morris, music & lyrics by Matthew Robinson), The Falling Season, a new hip hop musical by international hip hop legend Masta Ace. During the shutdown of 2020-2022, CreateTheater developed and/or produced more than 70 shows with online readings, workshops, and dramaturgical guidance. For this work, Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) honored her with the TRU Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2022. Cate holds a BFA in Acting/Directing from Syracuse University and an MFA in Dramaturgy at SUNY Stony Brook, and is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at CUNY Baruch College. Her book, Contemporary Monologues for a New Theater, published by Applause Books, was listed as one of the Top Ten Books for theater lovers by BroadwayDirect in 2018. www.CateCammarata.com www.CreateTheater.com

CHERYL L. DAVIS received the Kleban Award as a librettist for her musical Barnstormer (written with Douglas J. Cohen) about Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman flyer. The show received a Jonathan Larson Award through the Lark Play Development Center. Her play Maid’s Door received great reviews, won seven Audelco Awards, and was a finalist for the Francesca Primus Prize. Her play The Color of Justice (commissioned by Theatreworks/USA) received excellent reviews in The New York Times and Daily News, and tours regularly. Her musical Bridges, which was commissioned by the Berkeley Playhouse, received its world premiere in February 2016 to great reviews and three award nominations from the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. She received a Writers’ Guild Award for her work on “As the World Turns” and was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. Her work has been read and performed internationally, including at the Cleveland Play House, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Kennedy Center. She is the General Counsel of the Authors Guild.

SKIP KENNON was the overall Artistic Coordinator of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and the teacher of the first year there for two decades. He wrote the music for the one-man musical Herringbone(Playwrights Horizons – starring David Rounds, Hartford Stage – starring Joel Grey, Edinburgh Festival, Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theater, Chicago’s St. Nicholas Theater, 2007 season opener at Williamstown Theater Festival – starring B.D. Wong), the music for Here’s Our Girl (workshopped at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater), and the music and lyrics for the musical version of The Last Starfighter (Storm Theatre, Village Theatre Festival of New Musicals – summer 2006, New York Musical Theatre Festival readings – fall 2006), Blanco (Goodspeed Opera House at Chester, National Alliance for Musical Theatre, National Music Theater Network), Feathertop (WPA Theater, Pennsylvania Stage Co.), and Time and Again (Manhattan Theatre Club, San Diego’s Old Globe Theater, Eugene O’Neill Center National Music Theater Conference). Kennon also wrote the music and lyrics for the one-act musical Plaisir d’Amour (book by Terrence McNally), which was produced at New York’s Triangle Theater and seen in workshop at Circle Rep, as well as the music for the one-act musical Afternoon Tea (book & lyrics by Eduardo Machado), which was performed at Theater Row Theaters in 2005 by Ed Harris and Amy Madigan. He was a classical music critic at The Hollywood Reporter for five years.

TAMRA PICA, producer and casting director for Write Act Repertory. Tamra’s theater and television work spans 33 years and over 250 productions as a prop designer, AEA Stage Manager, producer, and casting director of plays, musicals, dance and ice shows. She produces both Off Broadway, as well as managing the Los Angeles theater presence for Write Act. Recent credits include the long-running Frankenstein, Wicked City Blues, and Swing. Other credits include: Lili Marlene, Caldwell’s Bomb for the New York Venus/Adonis Theater Festival, Renewal, Your Name on My Lips at Theater for the New City, and the long-running musical Fabulous! Queen of the New Musicals,where she served as a casting director and producer. Alongside theater, Tamra’s work production, casting, and development television work can be seen for companies such as Disney, Sony, Cartoon Network, NBC Studios, TBS, CBS, MTV, ABC, and FOX. She currently works on the animated Disney series Mira, Royal Detective.

JOHN SPARKS was the founder/co-director of the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, Inc. (1979-2002) and has been the Artistic Director of ANMT/NMI from 2002 to the present. He founded the Writer’s Workshop at Theatre Building Chicago in 1987 and also served TBC as Artistic Director from 1999 through 2009. Between the two workshops, John has mentored the work of over 250 writers, including Mark Hollmann, composer/lyricist of Urinetown; George Gorham and Dan Sticco, A Change in the Heir; Susan DiLallo and Ken Stone, both Kleban Award winners; and several Richard Rodgers Award winners. Nearly 400 shows written by workshop members have been produced in theatres across the country. Musicals for which John wrote the music, lyrics, or book have been produced in Los Angeles and Chicago, including Buddy’s Plane Is Down; Babes In Barns, Hans Brinker, On The Brink, and Wanting Miss Julie.

BOB OST While still a senior at U. of Pa., his one-act Beast was produced by Bob Moss in the first season of Playwrights Horizons. He went on to write book, music, and lyrics for the off-Broadway revue Everybody’s Gettin’ into the Act at the Actor’s Playhouse, and Finale!, Grand Prize winner in the 1990 American Musical Theater Festival Competition (presented at NAMT) and the 1992 New American Musical Writers Competition, and a finalist at the O’Neill Music Conference in 1989. More recently, his musical Angel in My Heart won Best Musical in the Fresh Fruit Festival. He won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Competition for his play Breeders, previously a finalist at the O’Neill, as well as a selection of the TRU Voices New Plays Reading Series. The Necessary Disposalwas a finalist in the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, has been a finalist in three other national competitions, and was part of the Shotgun Productions New Play Reading Series and the Oberon Theatre Reading Series, both in NYC; his one-act A Glass of Water was part of the Lovecreek Festival, HomoGenius Festival, Downtown Urban Arts Festival; other one-acts have been showcased all over New York. He won a 2004 OOBR Award for the review “Songs Are Like Friends” and is a 3-time MAC nominee. While he was producing his own musical revues at cabarets around Manhattan, he discovered he could combine his artistic talent with the business skills he was picking up in the advertising world. The idea of Theater Resources Unlimited was born, with the help of co-founders (and fellow writers) Gary Hughes and Cheryl Davis in 1992. He has gone on to produce musicals Civil War Voices and Rip in the Midtown International Theater Festival, and the classic Chinese musical, Romance of the Western Chamber.

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is the leading network for developing theater professionals, a thirty-three-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created to help producers produce, emerging theater companies to emerge healthily, and all theater professionals to understand and navigate the business of the arts. Membership includes self-producing artists as well as career producers and theater companies.

TRU publishes an email community newsletter of services, opportunities, and productions; presents weekly Community Gatherings about the arts, and monthly Town Halls about current social issues; offers a Producer Development & Mentorship Program taught by prominent producers and general managers in New York theater; and presents Producer Boot Camp workshops to help aspirants develop business skills. TRU serves writers through the TRU Voices Play Reading Series, TRUSpeak: Hear Our Voices (adapting short plays into films), Writer-Producer Speed Date, a Practical Playwriting Workshop, How to Write a Musical That Works, and a Director-Writer Communications Lab.

Programs of Theater Resources Unlimited are supported in part by the Leibowitz Greenway Foundation, Stewart F. Lane & Bonnie Comley, Merrie L. Davis, Dunbar Hofmann Productions, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

For more information about TRU membership and programs, visit www.truonline.org.

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